How I got into: Anime

“How did I get to this point?” I whisper to myself as I stare questionably at the figures on my desk. I arrange my Funko pops by collection, carefully setting them up around related collectibles. My manga has to be in order, all my prints have to be straight.

The word “Otaku” silently falls from my lips. I look around at my room, asking myself just how much money I spent at conventions and comic book stores for my room to look like this. “Why did I need to buy all those prints at Comic-Con? Why did I spend more than I make on a gaming computer? Why do I NEED so many replicas?!”

End scene.

Okay, but seriously. The other day I was thinking about how I got to where I am today, interest wise. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been into anime, manga, gaming, et cetera. But how and when did it all start?

Let’s start with Anime.

I believe anime was the very first thing that threw me into the “geek” culture. Well, besides gaming from a much younger age, but I think that will be a different blog altogether.

Starting with the absolute basics, Pokémon was my very first anime even though I had no idea the term “anime” even existed. I remember waking up early and rushing to get ready so I can sit down on my mom’s bed to watch Pokémon. One of my most vivid memories of that time was trying to hold back my tears during the “Bye, Bye Butterfree” episode. I get choked up just thinking about it! You all know the episode…

Now, if you were a fan of Pokémon, naturally you started collecting the cards and playing the games. They pretty much went hand and hand. It was pretty much impossible to watch Pokémon and not have a binder full of cards with your holographic’s proudly displayed on the front pages. Tell me you didn’t have one, go on, tell me!

Besides Pokémon, there were also the other kid-friendly shows like Sailor Moon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and the classics such as Speed Racer and Astro Boy. Again, I was pretty young at this point so these were all just cartoons to me, but I had to start somewhere.

Let’s fast forward to my awkward middle school days. At this point, I finally had a TV in my bedroom, but most higher up channels were fuzzy. But by some miracle, on Saturday nights if the sky was clear and the stars were aligned, my TV was able to clearly pick up Cartoon Network. What does Cartoon Network play late at night? Adult Swim. And what does Adult Swim turn into on Saturday nights? That’s right. Toonami.

Que the jazz music

Adult Swim, more specifically Toonami, was the late night block that singlehandedly hurled me into the vast, ever-growing world of anime that I never came back from, and I never will.

Here is a list of my favorites:

Inuyasha

Cowboy Bebop

Fullmetal Alchemist

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Case Closed

Shin-chan

FLCL (Sequel hype!)

Lupin the 3rd

Trigun

Samurai Champloo

The Big O

Super Milk Chan

Ah, such great memories! This list is the reason I am into anime as much as I am today. I still remember sitting in my room, propped against my bed and staying up watching the entirety of Toonami. Some of these I still watch today. Toonami aired plenty of anime, but these were the ones that I really got into, especially Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop and FLCL. I was in complete heaven when my house finally got better cable and I could watch Toonami every Saturday night.

Another channel that I was devoted to was the Funimation channel, but for some reason, I didn’t have it for very long. What happened to it? After some research, I found out the channel is now called Toku and airs in the United States, but unfortunately not trough my cable provider. Toku still airs anime, but they also show live-action movies such as Machine Girl and Ichi the Killer

Back then, I was only able to watch anime through Adult Swim, Funimation, or if I bought the DVDs like I did for Chobits. Nowadays, we have it so easy! We have websites such as Crunchyroll, Anime Planet, KissAnime, Hulu, and Netflix. Like I need more reasons to stay inside, away from family and civilization. I can’t tell you how many hours have gone to Crunchyroll and Netflix, but there is so much amazing anime out there.

Speaking of losing countless hours over anime, one can’t forget about the magical world of Studio Ghibli. I can write an entire blog post alone about Studio Ghibli, and I just might, but for now I am going to add it to this post as it is a big part of my life. The first Ghibli film I saw was Kiki’s Delivery Service. So pure and innocent, I absolutely loved that movie. I wanted to be a witch just like Kiki and I even tried to fly on a broomstick just like she did! I have no shame. I’ve spent a lot of time losing myself in the many worlds created by Studio Ghibli. How can you not? Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, I can go on and on naming all the fantastical and wondrous films that Hayao Miyazaki has given to us.

Anime has definitely come a long way, and I am glad I got into it when I did. I watched it long enough to see the stories and art styles evolve and I just can’t keep up with all of the new ones! There are so many genres to choose from. Slice of life, action, ecchi, shoujo, comedy, romance, seinen, the list can go on. These days I find myself watching more of the lewd animes along with the story driven, but that’s another story….ahem. As much as I want to sit down and finish Akiba’s Trip, Schoolgirl Strikers, and Re:ZERO, I can’t. Technically I am an adult now, and with that comes adult responsibilities such as work and school that take up most of my time. But every so often I sit down with a bottle of strawberry Ramune, fill my cherry blossom painted plate with chicken katsu, rice, and gyoza, and wrap myself in a blanket and binge watch every anime and Studio Ghibli movie I can fit into my night.

And here I am today. I love anime and I have yet to find a better way to pass the time without having to do anything, and that’s always a plus for me. I hope you enjoyed reading about how I fell in love with anime! I want to make this a mini-series and write about how I got into manga, gaming and cosplaying as well.

Are you into anime? How did it all start for you? What are some of your favorite classics? Let me know in the comments below! I would love to read about how other people got to this point as well.

7 thoughts on “How I got into: Anime”

Awesome post and thank you for sharing your experience! I remember having the trading cards for Pokemon and it got so crazy at my middle school that the principal would walk out in front of the school with a sign BANNING Pokemon cards!!!!! I almost died inside when that happened lol. I had a book of Pokemon cards in the protective sleeves that I lovedddd trading.

My favorite Pokemon episode was the one where he found Charmander and it was raining and his trainer abandoned him. I always cry see Charmander being patient waiting in the rain until his flame on his tail almost burnt out. Ohhh the memories.

Toonami got me into Anime as well. Case Closed and Inuyasha were my favorites. My first episode of Inuyasha was when he and Koga met Kagura at the abandoned mansion, When she tricked Koga into thinking Inuyasha murdered his comrades. That episode was sooo epic that I had to start watching all of the time. Case Closed I still watch to the day solving the crimes with Conan. It was good times.

Thank you! I can’t believe your principal actually banned them, they must have not been a fan of Pokémon. That, or they were jealous they didn’t have any holographic cards 🙂 Aw I remember that episode, too. It was so sad. Pokémon had to hit us in the feels at such a young age. Remember when he turned to stone in the movie?
Those were among my favorites! Case Closed was so good, can you believe it’s still going? I believe it has over eight-hundred episodes!
Thanks for commenting, Luna!

Yea he was very strict about banning the cards. Yes I remember that episode and another great episode happened with May when Combuskin transformed into Blaziken because he didn’t want to let May down. I crieddd like a baby lol. Case closed is sooo good but I hate reading sub titles. I have seasons 1-5 in English dub and I’m waiting for the other versions to become available lol.

Yeap. My primary school also banned Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and it happened on the day that I stacked 100 cards into each one of my short pockets. Like seriously, if cards had any value then I was definitely the richest kid in school. You can easily guess that the cards have been confiscated, more than 200 of them.

The first ‘anime’ that ever got me so eager to watch was Detective Conan. I only knew it as cartoon back in the days…

I'm Luna! A 20-something-year-old History major who loves gaming, comics, cons, cosplay and much more! Follow me to see my posts about conventions, video game updates, reviews, unboxings and everything related.

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.